Colorado Voices

When legality and justice are in conflict

We need to accept and welcome homosexuals into the community of rights we all enjoy, writes Andre Dion. (Associated Press file)

I am not an anarchist. I fully understand and believe in the rule of law. I also agree that in almost all cases, the preferred course of action is to let legal challenges run their course. There is brilliance in having an unelected judiciary provide oversight. Jurists are not beholden to a party or electorate, but to the law. If the people approve a law that is unjust or unconstitutional, it is the obligation of the judiciary to overturn it.

I also believe there are rare times when justice outweighs legality. This was the case during the struggle for civil rights when people knowingly broke unjust segregationist laws. The end result of those efforts were decisions that states did not have the right to enact laws which deny basic rights to any American citizen.

Over the ensuing 50 years, we have come to understand that homosexuals are also American citizens and entitled to all the rights thereof. This includes the right to marry. Attorney General John Suthers has been waging a dogged and ceaseless battle to uphold the ban on same-sex marriages, in defense of Colorado law. This is his job. But this battle for legality is at the expense of justice.

When Boulder County Clerk Hillary Hall issued marriage licenses to gay couples, it was not to flout the law. It was a deliberate and rational response to the circuit court decision overruling gay marriage bans. Suthers filed appeal after appeal until he finally got someone to agree with him. So we are on hold again.

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I strongly agree that we do not pick and choose which laws to follow and which to ignore. But in this very particular situation, I believe the right thing to do is to stop defending an unjust law. There are narrow and specific criteria for such action.

First, the law must be unjust and/or cause harm. Second, non-compliance with the law must not cause harm. As to the first, the nation is quickly reaching consensus that same-sex marriage is a fundamental human right. It is simply unjust to continue to discriminate against any class of people. And harm may certainly be caused in barring same-sex couples from the rights and privileges afforded married couples dealing with healthcare, beneficiary and other legal issues.

Second, what harm is caused by delaying the approval of gay marriage? What's another month or year or two when they've waited so long? The issue goes far deeper than wedding planning.

Legitimizing the marriage legitimizes those who marry. This demonstrates our growing national acceptance of homosexuality as a natural human variation, no more a personal "choice" than one's ethnicity.

Acceptance and tolerance are the deliverables. Gay slurs and epithets remain a bastion of acceptable discrimination. We wonder if a professional sport loaded with players accused of abusing women, drugs and each other can possibly tolerate a player who loves someone of the same sex. I wonder if Tony Dungy would ever have been a head coach had Branch Rickey decided Jackie Robinson was "too much of a distraction" to sign.

There are way too many stories of teens and pre-teens who are bullied and beaten because of real or supposed identification as homosexuals. I knew a bright and gifted 17-year-old who chose death over living as a gay.

We don't need one more day of bullying. We don't need one more Tyler Clementi. We don't need one more Matthew Shepard.

We need to accept and welcome homosexuals into the community of rights we all enjoy. We need the wonderful It Gets Better campaign to become obsolete because kids no longer have to deal with the cruelty dished out to those who are different. This only happens when we accept that gay is not a lifestyle or a fashion. It is a variation in human sexuality.

It is never the wrong time to do the right thing.

Andre Dion has worked for 38 years as a machine operator, supervisor, and currently Training Manager in a glass bottle manufacturing facility in Wheat Ridge.

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